Op-ed: With ruling on marriage equality, fight for gay families is next

By Douglas NeJaimeJune 26, 2015 Los Angeles Times

With the Supreme Court’s marriage decision in Obergefell vs. Hodges, one might think that equality for gay families has arrived. But that would be a mistake. The court’s ruling could work to produce new conflicts and intensify old ones. The danger arises because marriage equality doesn’t immediately or necessarily erase cultural and legal attachments to biological, dual-gender parenting.

Consider the position of David Blankenhorn, head of the Institute for American Values and star witness in favor of Proposition 8 when California’s gay-marriage ban went on trial in 2010. Back then, Blankenhorn justified such bans based on “[t]he need … to make it as likely as we can, that the biological parents are also the social and legal parents.” In 2012, Blankenhorn announced a change of heart on same-sex marriage, but he still hoped “both gays and straight[s]” could agree that “children born through artificial reproductive technology [have] the right to know and be known by their biological parents.”